Icon Water, the water and wastewater services company serving the Australian Capital Territory, has selected Unit4 cloud applications to modernise its finance functions. The organisation previously had an Oracle EBS solution as part of its outsourcing agreement with ActewAGL. Icon Water will deploy Unit4 ERP for Finance Management and Unit4 Financial Planning and Analysis (FP&A).
The deployment will see Icon Water take back control of its finance solution and reporting. It ends part of the relationship with its joint venture with ActewAGL. Unit4 called out several advantages of moving to its cloud solutions, namely:
- Consolidation of all financial data and assets into a single user-friendly view
- Leading global accounting software designed to increase speed, accuracy and efficiency throughout the organization
- Deeper financial insights for better short- and long-term decision making
- Empowering and aligning team members throughout the organization, supported by leading AI-driven analysis tools
It will also benefit from the regular cadence of updates that Unit4 rolls out to its cloud solution. This comes without the need for costly, disruptive and time-consuming upgrades that Oracle EBS would have presented.
Joy Yau, Chief Finance Officer at Icon Water, commented: “We’re focused on continuously improving efficiency and data-based decision-making in order to drive greater sustainable value for our customers. By partnering with Unit4 we will be able to simplify our processes and unlock opportunities to optimize the use of our resources into the future.”
Icon Water employs 400 people to manage the region’s critical infrastructure It includes dams, water and wastewater treatment plants, reservoirs, and mains. The new finance solution will help drive efficiencies across the administration function. It will also highlight improved financial efficiencies in the wider organisation.
Finding the right partner
To deploy the new solution, Icon Water turned to Kardinya Partners, a Unit4 Select Partner. Founded in 2020 by a team that worked together at the NSW Department of Education, they are no strangers to public sector deployments.
Andries Treurnicht, Co-Managing Partner at Kardinya Partners, said: “As a Unit4 Implementation Partner, we are very pleased to be working on this project to support the implementation, delivery and deployment of the Unit4 platform. Our teams are excited to be working alongside Unit4 and Icon Water on this flagship program.”
Importantly, Kardinya Partners has the skills to deploy the solution. It also has the business transformation and change management services that Icon Water will need as it brings the finance solutions back in-house.
For Unit4, this is a good win for its APAC business unit. Unit4 has a strong pedigree in working with the public sector. It will hope that this win will help open further doors.
Andy Brockhoff, Regional President of APAC at Unit4, said: “We’re thrilled to partner with Icon Water to help them develop a deeper understanding of their business and save time on systems and processes. Our purpose-built solutions and deep industry knowledge of Australia’s public sector organizations mean we can help Icon Water run and scale more successfully.”
Enterprise Times: What does this mean
The news should not come as too much of a surprise to ActewAGL. In its capital expenditure report, Icon Water announced: “Delivery of our Digital Strategy (2021–28) will also ensure we have the technology to support continued efficient service delivery and improve the customer experience. Key capital investments for 2023–28 include an enterprise resource planning (ERP) capability that will automate manual processes to provide stronger governance, increased accuracy and enhanced transparency.”
It is now delivering on that promise, having reached an agreement with Unit4. This is not a simple project, with data migration from an outsourced implementation of another solution. It will be interesting to see how Kardinya partners overcome the challenge it presents.
